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Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

After taking a look at a pre-release copy of a new report chronicling trends in the healthcare IT staffing world (The full report will be released during HIMSS), I’ve realized that many of my assumptions about the health IT workforce are wrong. The report, from specialist technology recruitment firm Greythorn, offers a useful look at just who makes up the healthcare IT workforce and how they prefer to work, but just as importantly, how health organizations are treating them.

To collect its data, the recruiting company surveyed 430 U.S. IT professionals over Q4 2015. Greythorn focused on factors that define the healthcare pro’s work experience, including the demographics of the HIT workforce, length of tenure, hours in a typical work week, career motivation and reward/bonus trends.

More than one item in the report surprised me. For example, despite last year’s ups and downs, 84% of respondents reported feeling optimistic or extremely optimistic about healthcare IT, up from 78% the previous year.

Also, some of the demographics data caught me off guard:

59% of respondents were female, while only 41% were male. I couldn’t dig up a stat on the overall makeup of the US HIT workforce, but my best guess is that it’s still male-dominated. So this was of note.

Also, 52% of respondents were between 43 and 60 years old, though another 24% of respondents were 25 to 34 years old. On level it makes sense, as health IT work takes specialized expertise that doesn’t come overnight, but it bucks the general IT image as a haven for young hopefuls.

I was also surprised to learn that only 40% of respondents were employed full time, On the other hand, given that consultants and contractors can earn 50% to 100% more than full-timers (Greythorn’s data), it’s actually a pretty logical development.

Greythorn found that 43% of respondents were working 41 to 45 per week, not bad for a demanding professional position. On the other hand, 21% report working 46 to 50 hours, and 10% more than 60 hours.

The report also served up some interesting data regarding HIT hiring and staff headcount:

39% of respondents said that they expected to increase headcount, perhaps signalling a move away from implementing big projects largely with contractors. On the other hand, 24% reported that they expected to cut headcount, so I could be off base.

On the flip side, only 9% said that they expected to see significant headcount losses, with 33% asserting that headcount would probably remain the same.

When it came to technical specializations, the results were fairly predictable. When asked which EMR system they knew best:

55% of respondents named Epic

19% named Cerner

5% named Meditech

3% named Allscripts and McKesson

14% cited “other”

Finally, given that many of the survey respondents seem to cluster at the high end of experience levels, I was intrigued to note the wide spread in salaries, which ranged from less than $50K per year to to more than $160K. Some of the most interesting numbers, included the following:

20% reported earning $50K to $69,999

21% were earning $100K to $119,999

6% reported earning more than $160K

To my way of thinking, it doesn’t make sense that 53% of health IT pros — many of whom reported being fairly senior, were making less than $100K per year.

Sure, health organizations’ budgets are stretched thin. But skimping on IT pay is likely to have a negative impact on recruitment and retention. As we cruise into 2016, let’s keep an eye on this problem. I doubt junior- to mid-level salaries will attract the hard-core HIT veterans needed to transform health IT over the coming years.

Note: Healthcare Scene helped promote this survey and Greythorn pays to post its healthcare IT jobs to our healthcare IT job board.

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